Fulton County Commissioner Liz Hausmann, District 1, will hold a Town Hall Meeting on April 24th at Chattahoochee High School to discuss 2018 Property Assessments in order to provide information and assistance to understand how property is assessed. Assessment Notices will be mailed late May.
“It is my hope that homeowners will attend this important meeting,” states Commissioner Liz Hausmann. “I am holding this town hall to give them an opportunity to ask questions, learn how their property is assessed and to learn about the appeal process if they disagree with the assessed value of their property.”
On Tuesday, April 24th, Commissioner Hausmann, along with staff from the Tax Assessors’ Office, will be at:
Chattahoochee High School
5230 Taylor Road
Johns Creek, GA 30022
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Visit www.fultonassessor.org for more information about property assessments.
This is one of the biggest outstanding issues we face going forward. We all know the issues we have had with the Tax Assessments here in Johns Creek and the rest of Fulton County. Around 1/3 of this City's revenue comes from property taxes.
We also have every reason to believe that valuations are going to rise much much faster than most are prepared for. And we know the flaws we all face with such a system.
Our city, county, and school officials can negate the major portion of this problem by agreeing to start at the "roll-back" rate every year.
Were officials to do this, then over the course of time(10 years for example) the impact to you and your property taxes should be as minimal as possible. The average of your increases in the years where your property values went up would balance with the years where your property valuations stayed the same IF the roll-back rate was selected every year.
But of course, I cannot be sure I would trust officials to do this over the course of ten years and neither should you. The temptation for a windfall in tax revenues is just too great for some elected officials.
We encourage you to attend: Liz Hausmann to hold Town Hall Meeting. Voice your concerns. And be sure to ask why there are certain business properties that have also not been revalued for many years.
Only pressure from all of us will encourage a fair and reasonable system to be implemented for all of us.
-EJM
I will be there for sure. We should all be very concerned about this topic and we should be grateful to Liz for taking the time to address these issues.
What's the perfect tax rate for Johns Creek?
There is no perfect tax rate when it comes to property taxes. The tax rate selected by City Council members yields the tax revenue that they seek from you. This is how the system is designed to work.
Some people on this site were suggesting raising property taxes instead of TSPLOST (due to local control and tax deduction for itemized fliers). Good thing we did not go that route, since many will no longer itemize with the new federal tax plan and with Fulton County raising our assessments the increase will be even more than planned for many with loss of tax federal deduction. Lets hope they do the assessments fairly and reasonably.
Residents of Johns Creek with their property taxes, mortgage interest, medical and dental, and charitable donations are meeting the level for itemized deductions.
As for TSPLOST, we have sacrificed control. Watch the discussions at City Council on the projects.
Property assessments would not actually matter at all if each and every year the CITY selected the rollback rate. The rollback rate makes sure the same amount of revenue is generated from the same properties this year as it did last year.
That is up to the City Council to make that happen. Don't be fooled by distracting arguments over property valuations.
Johns Creek residents are meeting the level for itemized deductions currently, but effective tax year 2018, the level of deductions a joint tax filer must meet to itemize has doubled and is now $24,000 with property taxes and state income taxes capped at $10k. One would have to have more than $14,000 in mortgage interest, charitable interest and medical deductions to reach that gap which is a tall order considering how low mortgage rates are. Limiting property taxes and state income tax deduction to a mere 10k is what hurts. Also medical expense deduction has a very high barrier, you can only deduct out of pocket uninsured bills and only the amount that exceed 10% of Adjusted Gross Income. A very high hurdle considering the average salary in Johns Creek and most people have insurance and do not suffer catatrophic injury or illness each year. . Most people will simply take the standard deduction.
I think we need to do a rollback on millage rates and have a better exemption for seniors. We are losing to Forsyth County where seniors get a larger break not subject to income limitations and everyone enjoys lower property taxes.
Perhaps we need to break from Fulton County and merge ourselves with Forsyth County.....